Overthinking

One of the most annoying things about being a writer is the whole constant introspection thing. Blogs are largely selfish enterprises, and I, for one, write a lot of personal posts here because setting it down into some kind of narrative makes it all make sense for me.

But at some point, I think, you start to overthink things. You start overthinking your life and either second-guessing yourself, or basing decisions on what you think is perfect logic, only to discover that people aren’t ruled exclusively by logic, let alone perfect logic (you least of all). Just because a Shakespearean tragedy is easy to predict doesn’t mean life works that way, too.

The older I get, the more I realize I don’t have a fucking clue. I keep thinking I’m learning from all of my experiences, but the more you have, the more you realize that not every experience prepares you for the next one. You can’t apply all of your learning about one person/friendship/relationship to every person/friendship/relationship you have that shares one or two or ten of the same things the last one did, and no matter how much you work to align the stars and test for all the right traits and work toward understanding, at the end of the day, even the earth’s orbit wobbles, and our galaxy is continually spinning closer to oblivion. Nothing is constant. Nothing is absolute.

Nothing is terribly rational, either, and no matter how hard I try and work life into a narrative, I’m starting to think that narratives only work in fiction.

Which probably explains why I love writing fiction.